What happens to whistleblowers?

That’s true even when whistleblowers try to report the problems internally, rather than going to the media first, Clark said. “There just aren’t any mechanisms for raising these issues that don’t lead to severe threats to their own security, as well as to their jobs,” Clark said.

Tamm was never prosecuted for his role in disclosing the NSA’s warrantless surveillance. But he spent five years under investigation, had to leave the Justice Department, and never had a steady income during that whole time. He looked for work on Capitol Hill, he said, but “I quickly got the sense that I was too controversial.”

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Now, Tamm is getting by with his criminal defense private practice. But “it’s not great,” Tamm admitted, and he mentioned — almost casually — that “I’m getting close to maybe having to sell my house.”

And Tamm also had to endure an FBI raid on his house during the investigation — just as Drake and two other NSA whistleblowers, William Binney and J. Kirk Wiebe, had their houses raided. Those three were targeted because they had filed a complaint with the Defense Department inspector general about the wasteful NSA surveillance program, and the FBI suspected — wrongly — that they were also sources for the New York Times report on the warrantless surveillance activities.

“It takes a heavy toll. You’re constantly looking over your shoulder,” said Tamm. After the FBI raid, he said, “I knew I was being followed, I knew my phone was being tapped, I knew my emails were being read. It’s just hard to concentrate on other stuff.”

Diaz, the Navy lawyer who disclosed the names of Guantanamo prisoners, was court martialed and disbarred in Kansas, where he had been licensed to practice law. He’s now trying to get admitted to the New York bar, but in the meantime, he’s working as an intake coordinator in the Bronx public defender’s office because he’s not allowed to do legal work, according to Jack Focht, the lawyer who represented him in Kansas. (Diaz declined to discuss his situation for this story.)

Tamm didn’t go to jail — the government dropped the case against him in 2011 because, as he says, “I think they ended up concluding that I hadn’t committed a crime.”

That’s a key difference between his case and Snowden’s, Tamm says. “I didn’t turn over any documents to a reporter or anyone who didn’t have a security clearance,” Tamm said. “As a lawyer, I’d say that’s his biggest hurdle.”

But Snowden has said he leaked the surveillance documents because, as he told the Guardian, “I can’t in good conscience allow the US government to destroy privacy, internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world.”

That’s not a view that will get a lot of sympathy — especially in official Washington — since Snowden did have a security clearance and used it to pass on documents he had promised to protect.

Even Tamm says it’s not clear that Snowden actually exposed anything that violates the law — unlike the warrantless surveillance that he disclosed. Tamm’s explanation of his role in revealing that surveillance is simple: He was a Justice Department lawyer, and he saw illegal things going on.

“It’s a real stretch to say that the law permits the government to do this, but it’s not clear that it was illegal,” Tamm said.

But not all whistleblowers limit themselves to exposing illegal activities. Coleen Rowley, the former FBI agent who exposed intelligence failures that happened before the Sept. 11 attacks, didn’t accuse the intelligence community of doing anything against the law — just dropping the ball.

Rowley says that when she joined the bureau, “we were all given training that if you see something wrong going on … we were the good guys, and we had to do something about that.”

Now, the focus in Washington is turning to how to prevent contractors like Snowden from having so much access to classified information — and how to stop the leaks more broadly among national security employees. But lawmakers could cut down on those leaks easily, said Clark of the Government Accountability Project, if they would give more protection to whistleblowers who try to raise their concerns within the proper channels — rather than taking them public.

If they really wanted to stop national security leaks, Clark said, “you would deal with these problems in a way … that doesn’t make them feel like they have no other choice.”